U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection
An SBInet sensor array.
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced yesterday that she will be holding up funding for deployment of sensors and other systems for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection’s beleaguered Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet). Since 2006, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has attempted to employ a complex system of systems for monitoring the U.S.-Mexico border (and the Canadian one, too), allocating some $1.1 billion to a “virtual fence” program that has repeatedly been cited as failing to deliver.
Secretary Napolitano’s announcement shows that DHS is willing to rethink the strategy for border management put into place by the last administration. Back in 2007, I published my thoughts on SBInet in the wake of President Bush’s failure to secure immigration reform from the U.S. Congress.
DHS is saddled with the problem of keeping out people literally dying by the hundreds in the Sonoran Desert and elsewhere for the opportunity to increase their income by a factor of 10 by crossing a boundary that separates the developing world from a post-industrial superpower. President Bush was entirely in the right to pursue immigration reform and a managed guest worker program, but with their political defeat on the Hill, the surviving legacy will be the deployment of a hugely expensive and dysfunctional surveillance system unlikely to stop illegal immigration. Of greater value in managing this risk is not a system of fences, real and virtual, but rather a strengthened partnership with Mexico City.
Nobody at DHS thought to ask the Border Patrol what kind of system it wanted and government fell into the trap of seeing technology as a silver bullet. Nor did DHS specify if the system was designed to keep out economic migrants, drug traffickers or terrorists. The good news is that money will be repurposed to get useful technology (night vision, mobile computing and communications gear) into the hands of Border Patrol officers that will help them to do their jobs better. After that, the next challenge will be to get our Border Patrol working with its Mexican counterparts on sharing the burdens of border security.
Christopher Bronk is the Baker Institute fellow in technology, society and public policy. He previously served as a career diplomat with the United States Department of State and served in the U.S. Consulate General in Tijuana, Mexico from 2003 to 2005.